I've often thought about the perfect geocaching tool to be used exclusively for geocaching, and wondered if I was a designer for Garmin-- what kinds of features it would have. Some of the features are already out and in the woods, so-to-speak, but often times the features aren't on one device, or it doesn't behave in a manner that is conducive to the average geocacher.

That being said if you were a designer, what kinds of things would you want?_________________The Lucid Network (tm)-- More Bars in More Places!

I like the idea of paperless caching as handled by the Colorado. I also think the Colorado does an excellent job integrating topographic and city maps. The topo shading is OK but there is room for improvement, perhaps.

I wish there was a pairing function that would work over great distances so that paired devices could talk to each other over a distance of a few miles or so to figure out where others are. This would be awesome for competitive geocaching events like MOGA and the Deadmen caching event that was held a few years back.

Not every geocache is memorable, but everyone still has to log them regardless. It'd be nice to have a small camera built into the device with geotagging.

Wifi access in a GPSr sounds appealing. Perhaps this would be best accomplished by taking a coordinate position, logging into geocaching.com and then dynamically pulling cache listings directly to your unit. No thumbing, just turn it on, get to some wireless access and then off you go!_________________The Lucid Network (tm)-- More Bars in More Places!

I have high hopes for the iPhone, now that the new one has GPS and third-party apps. The GPS reception probably isn't very good, realistically.. Although, it does use information from cell towers to improve the signal, so maybe it could be as good or better? If so, someone could write a GPS app for it, making it a phone-GPS-PDA-camera-internet-all-in-one device. That would be awesome...

My brother, whom has recently turned into a geocacher, has aspirations to do this himself.

Touch screen on a GPS would be pretty sweet. I'm not entirely sure the new iPhones will be a valuable replacement for a stand-alone handheld._________________The Lucid Network (tm)-- More Bars in More Places!

That being said if you were a designer, what kinds of things would you want?

The features I would like in my handheld:
- Cellphone
- GPS
- Ability to run custom applications, ie. Geocaching tool.
- Internet/Email/Calendar
- Mapping software with autorouting

Granted, I am not a MAC guy. But I have to agree with Pfalstad. The new iPhone seems to come pretty darn close to the perfect handheld in terms of features. A live internet connection on your GPSr and a good geocaching app on it removes the reason to loading cache info back and forth from your device, keeping it up-to-date through a computer or messing around with pocket queries. I cannot recall the number of times I've searched for a disabled cache due to this issue.

Unfortunately for the traditional GPS manutacturers. The game for handhelds is rapidly shifting away from their devices since they cannot offer internet connectivity at a reasonable cost, which the cellphone guys can.

Unfortunately for the traditional GPS manutacturers. The game for handhelds is rapidly shifting away from their devices since they cannot offer internet connectivity at a reasonable cost, which the cellphone guys can.

Its the beginning of the end! I would also be nice if you could record voice messages that were geotagged right in the field, like that iPhone app OregonBrad posted about yesterday._________________The Lucid Network (tm)-- More Bars in More Places!

I have an 'old' (classic?) iPhone, but have been watching development of a Geopher, an applet that puts a geocaching interface on the iPhone. Doesn't look like it's ready for primetime yet, but should be great when it's finished.

What I'd really like is a version of Cachemate for the phone, that's the only reason I keep my Palm around anymore...

I don't know, I hate to say it but I like to leave something for the imagination. I like the new antenna system which is more accurate, I like having some logs and the hint and stuff along with me but still for me it is a walk in the woods, the mountains, the swamp (if I am going after Gilligan's Island) or just a walk along a park trail. I like the simplicity of it all where the unit gets me into the area and lets me do the searching. I like the Colorado 400t that I have, am very very very glad that software version 2.6 came out because I was having a weird problem that was fixed by it.

I do not want my GPS unit to be able to make a phone call, I have a cell phone for that. I do not want my GPS unit to take a photo, I have a camera for that. I get my coffee from Caribou or make it myself so a coffee maker is out too. I do not want them to become so complex and powerful that it degrades the basic functions of a GPS unit when it comes to functioning as a GPS unit, Or become so expensive that I have an even harder time talking my wife into getting one.

Leave them alone, get the antenna to the best possible antenna, get me a few logs and a nice day with a decent pair of hiking boots and let me go caching.